NEW YORK — Laying out her agenda to help American workers, Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday said she would seek to build a “growth and fairness economy” if elected to the White House that would rejuvenate wages that have remained stagnant since the Great Recession.
In her first major economic speech of her presidential campaign, Clinton vowed to crack down on Wall Street excess and warned that a large field of Republican White House hopefuls would promote tax cuts and return to policies that would balloon the national debt. She singled out three GOP candidates by name, including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, whom she accused of failing to understand the plight of workers.
“You may have heard Governor Bush say last week that Americans just need to work longer hours. Well, he must not have met very many American workers,” Clinton said at The New School in New York, urging Bush to speak to nurses, truckers or fast food workers. “They don’t need a lecture. They need a raise.”
Bush spokeswoman Allie Brandenburger said in response that Clinton was “proposing the same failed policies we have seen in the Obama economy, where the typical American household’s income has declined and it’s harder for businesses to hire and the middle class to achieve rising incomes.” Republicans note that under President Barack Obama, the workplace participation rate has declined to their lowest levels since 1977.
In an agenda-setting address, Clinton sought to appeal to liberal voters within her party who have questioned her willingness to regulate Wall Street and rallied behind her chief Democratic rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. The message also appeared aimed at an anxious electorate who has seen little gains in their paychecks even as the nation moves past the Great Recession.
“As the shadow of crisis recedes and longer-term challenges come into focus, I believe we have to build a growth and fairness economy,” Clinton said. “You can’t have one without the other.”
Clinton said she would propose more public investment in infrastructure projects, advance renewable energy and tax cuts for small business owners. She expressed support for an increase in the federal minimum wage, an overhaul to the tax code, and policy proposals related to child care and paid family leave.
Clinton, who maintained strong ties to Wall Street as a New York senator, pushed back against the industry, saying the largest financial institutions had too often focused on short-term profits instead of helping grow the economy.
She expressed outrage at accounts of money laundering and currency manipulation involving several major financial firms, calling it “shocking,” and promised criminal prosecutions of bad bankers. One of the firms she identified, HSBC, paid former President Bill Clinton $200,000 to speak at a Florida conference in 2011, an appearance that was cleared by the State Department despite an ongoing federal money-laundering probe that led HSBC to reach a 2012 settlement with prosecutors.
The former secretary of state said few rogue traders had faced consequences for malfeasance, a subtle swipe at the Obama administration, which took no action against the individual financial titans who pursued risky fiscal practices. “This is wrong, and on my watch it will change,” she said.
Clinton also vowed to expand the Dodd-Frank law passed by Congress in 2010, which tightened regulation of financial institutions and said she would bolster government oversight of hedge funds and high-frequency traders.
The speech offered Clinton’s most extensive critique of Bush, a top contender for the GOP nomination.
Clinton said the nation’s economy should not be measured by “some arbitrary growth targets untethered to people’s lives and livelihoods.” That was a veiled reference to Bush, who has said he would set a goal of 4 percent economic growth, including 19 million jobs, if elected president.
She also lobbed criticism at Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who was launching his campaign on Monday. Rubio’s tax proposal is a “budget-busting giveaway to the super-wealthy,” Clinton said, and she called Walker an example of a GOP governor who had “made their names stomping on workers’ rights.”
Clinton, meanwhile, made no mention of Sanders, who has wooed Democrats by making economic inequality the central plank of his insurgent campaign. Her speech coincided with a courting of labor groups and Hispanic officials and came as Sanders has risen in recent polls.
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